#$%*&!!! will someone please help me with this?

[Bubbajj]

When I watch films by other people the one thing that I notice is that their gunsight is rock solid. It goes where pointed and stays there. When I'm trying to line up a shot it bounces around like it's on rubber bands. I ran up the butt on a P51 the other day, he was slow at the apex of a climb and I was faster and closing. As I got to less than 200 ( way less ) I couldn't get the hits cause the nose was bouncin around. It was an easy kill but I couldn't close it. What the hell am I doing wrong? Could someone post a picture of their stick scaling? Could it be my stick? I have a logitec extreme 3d pro. Seriously, If I could get my ship steady like I've seen in other people's films my gunnery would go WAY up. This is probably the main reason people get away from me, it's not that I can't maneuver about, I just can't get the shots off when the opportunity presents itself. This is really irritating.

[Benny Moore]

I think it's your stick.  The Logitch I used was so imprecise that I actually could not land without exploding.  And I usually make good landings.

[clerick]

Have you adjusted the bands in AH?  I went through this with a few people until i got the hang of it and was able to tweak it to my preference and it made a WORLD of difference, and i use the x52 too.

[The Fugitive]

Its most likely your stick. In most cases Logitic stick are sloppy and just don't like to stay where you want them to.

You can go to Murdr's Site  and download Ak-Ak's stick settings. His are for a CH stick I believe, but the sliders are still in a good place to start with all sticks.

Remember, "dead band" is to stop your stick from spiking,

"damping" slows the initial stick movement. If you use too much of this, you'll yank quick to a point on your target, and then the damping will catch up and jump you past where you thought you stopped.

"Scaling", is the best place to adjust, but remember to click the allow scaling box at the top of the page.

[Ghosth]

Actually fugitive Dead band sets the center dead zone aka slop.
Damping is used to stop stick spiking and decrease overall sensitivity.

Logitech has earned a terrible reputation with their current joysticks.

Get a saitek, ST290, Cyborg, Aviator, or on up to the X52 all will work better longer than a logitech.

[Scca]

Originally posted by clerick
Have you adjusted the bands in AH?  I went through this with a few people until i got the hang of it and was able to tweak it to my preference and it made a WORLD of difference, and i use the x52 too.

Do what he said first..

Next, what are your frame rates?  I was having the same issue and found it was because when I got close, my frame rate dropped off.  If your frame rates are less than 25 or 30 then you may have issues..

[Ack-Ack]

Originally posted by Bubbajj
When I watch films by other people the one thing that I notice is that their gunsight is rock solid. It goes where pointed and stays there. When I'm trying to line up a shot it bounces around like it's on rubber bands. I ran up the butt on a P51 the other day, he was slow at the apex of a climb and I was faster and closing. As I got to less than 200 ( way less ) I couldn't get the hits cause the nose was bouncin around. It was an easy kill but I couldn't close it. What the hell am I doing wrong? Could someone post a picture of their stick scaling? Could it be my stick? I have a logitec extreme 3d pro. Seriously, If I could get my ship steady like I've seen in other people's films my gunnery would go WAY up. This is probably the main reason people get away from me, it's not that I can't maneuver about, I just can't get the shots off when the opportunity presents itself. This is really irritating.

Adjust your stick scale to help lessen the nose bounce.



ack-ack

[dedalos]

Ahhhh, Logitech.  I used them for 2 years.  They spike after after a couple of weeks of use.  Try the dumpening,  or get a new stick.

[Krusty]

You can help it a bit with scaling, but you can't fix it. I'm going to post 3 quotes here that involve stick scaling, nose bounce, and the sliders in the scaling screen. Take from them what you will. Please note that the images of my sliders are somewhat similar to what I used when I had my Logitech Wingman stick, they should help you a little bit.

Originally posted by Krusty
Stick scaling doesn't change the time it takes to get to a deflection, that's dampening.


Scaling has 2 extremes, 0 and 100. At 0 (center) you will have the same deflection as the stick. At 100 you will have the same deflection as the stick. What the scaling does is change the position of the stick and the position on the curve between those two points. The older graph was much better at showing this.

I drew a fast graph. Pretend this is accurate


EDIT: This is only one direction. Mirror it on the left side to see both left and right motion for the same axis


The green line is your stick movement. You have zero to full, in a smooth straight line. This is what you get when you disable "scaling" on the scaling page.

Now, we'll use my Y-axis. Pretend it's a bit more curved. By taking my Y-axis and scaling it like I did, I get the red line. This means the more push the stick along its deflection (from 0 to 100) I get less movement. This mean I can fine-tune my position. Then as the scaling jumps up it moves more at the further deflection, until finally at the end it's 100% again.

The yellow lines are the sliding scales. The bottom of each yellow line is its own 0 and the top of each is its own 100. Think of it as a percent of the total deflection possible.

I'm not sure if I've described that clearly, but I tried. I hope it was helpful.

My scaling (not perfect but should help a bit, work best with older budget sticks):

Originally posted by Krusty
MS Sidewinder gameport, CH pedals gameport (hard-wired to work without an attached joystick).





Now that I look at it, my Y axis could use a little tweaking, but I'm not going to mess with it. I'm used to it at the moment.

^-- I don't know if I ended up tweaking the scaling on my rudder pedals. I'l have to go home and double check, to make sure.

Regarding rudders (and aiming):

Originally posted by Krusty
I was tagging along with spiked earlier today as a passenger while he was fighting. I didn't have much time and might have had to leave in the middle of a fight, so he let me watch. I noticed the nose bounce he had and asked him about it, and told him I had the same problem a while back. I used to have that same problem.

For the most part it's been eliminated. Even when I still used a twisty-stick rudder I was able to get rid of most of it.

What's the problem? Most of it's scaling. Here's an image for illustration:



Now the crosshair is where you're pointing without rudder input. I aimed high so you could see the stuff I was about to draw on it and still see the target. The green (green = good) is where you want it. The yellow (yellow = caution) is where it goes. The smallest possible input on your rudder axis produces a large leap. In fact it usually takes a bit more than "minimal" input before this first leap in input takes effect.

You end up going PAST the target, then if you over correct or try to reduce the rudder it swings all the way past to the other side. You end up going back and forth around the target, as illustrated with the red lines on top (red = bad).

There is a way to fix this. I spent many hours fine-tuning my twisty-stick to get it to the point where I could aim well using the twisty stick. I got SO good at aiming with my twisty stick it's taken me this long to become comfortable after switching to pedals!

Okay, the problem is you don't have any fine-tuning ability. The smallest input you can give produces too large a rudder deflection. Go to your rudder scaling in aces high, and try this:



I've had this memorized, I spent so much time getting it right. I reproduced it offline right now (I don't use it with the pedals, they're a different beast altogether).

You see how the first 10%, 20%, are almost the same? 30% is only a hair more, and 40% is where it starts climbing? This means you use more input and get LESS results. That means you CAN fine-tune your shots. When you use rudder you will no longer zip back and forth across the target. However, you WILL have to re-learn your aiming. It will take some time to get comfortable, as you will need to add MORE input than you're used to. Once you're used to adding more input you'll be good to go.

A side note about this scaling. It's designed to allow more motion with less input on the first half of the scale. That means no more "push until the stick kicks in -- oops it's kicked in too much I better back off". It's more like "I know I have to push anyways, and when it kicks in it will be gentle". Then as you get past the fine-tuning stage, you get into the rudder range most often used for movements. Half-deflection would be more useful with coordinated turns, or applying rudder to prevent slip in slow-speed spiral climbs, and so on. The last stage goes very steeply, because there are only a few times you need 100% rudder deflection, and usually you're slamming on the rudder pedal and it doesn't require any fine tuning. You would use this for forcing over-shoots, possibly correcting spin, and slowing down to land (side slipping).

Note that I cannot put them all at zero. My stick spikes even while at rest. If I set them at zero it will spike in game and I will get "do not move so fast" messages. You want some deadzone to prevent spikes and accidental auto-pilot disabling. You do NOT want to move your deadband higher than the level of your lowest slider. The lowest slider in this case is the first 10%. If you still have spiking and you need to shift deadband up, then you must move all the sliders from 1 through 5 up as well, so that the lowest one is still above the deadband slider. Then adjust the others to continue the curve.

If you have deadband higher than your first sliders, then your input will skip those and "jump" to the next highest one, and you get back to the problem with sudden jerky motions.

Is this system perfect? No. It's pretty close, though. I literally spent a couple of years constantly changing and tweaking it, and this helped me get rid of most of my aiming problems.

You can do similar things to X and Y axis as well, but I would suggest a more casual slope, as you don't need as much fine tuning on those. You might not need this on anything but your rudder.

If you have any questions please ask. I had to go out, but was thinking about typing this up while I was out, and hope I haven't missed anything vital or important.

EDIT: A note on fine-tuning. 50/60/70 are what you'd do if you were uncomfortable with the mid-range motions. Were I still using a twist-action, I'd lower these a little, to allow a little more finesse. 80 should always be halfway between 70 and 90, but 50/60/70 will define the angle of the curve between 40 and 90.

[Bubbajj]

I adjusted my scaling like Krusty suggested a few weeks ago and haven't noticed a lot of difference. I added some dead band and some dampening but that really didn't seem to help the imprecise nature of what was going on with flight control. I may just dump the cash for a Saitek. For a hundred and nineteen bucks I can get on with the separate throttle control and a bunch more buttons. Ive had the Logitec for years and it may be just time for a new one. Thanks for all your replies.

[Krusty]

Here's a tip:

Go into windows control panel and bring up the Game Controllers window. Open up and calibrate the stick you've got. Now after you're done calibrating you can test it (move it around and press the buttons).


Try to move the stick 1/2 up and 1/2 over and KEEP it there. Try 1/4 up and 1/4 over. Try mixtures of left/right up/down. If its jumping and really hard to steady, you've got a crap stick. If you can generally keep it in one spot, semi-steady without much input, your stick might be usable, and you may find another way of scaling the stick to suit your needs.

P.S. Also try making smooth motions and watch the crosshair in the test window. If you're moving from point A to B it should be smooth and steady. If it starts hopping around, or deviates up and down when it shouldn't, that falls under "crap stick" category.

[THOR01]

Thanks first off to Krusty, nice reading. I have a X52 only been at this for a couple of months but just resently rally trying to understand WHY I CAN'T HIT CRAP.

Following and keeping the target in the sites is going pretty good but when I pull the trigger to light him up man the nose is all over the place. I'll check and confirm the dampning and scalling this evening . Don't know if it that or pulling th trigger to hard or just excitement ( kinda like a 16 year old on a first date).

[Scca]

Originally posted by THOR01
Thanks first off to Krusty, nice reading. I have a X52 only been at this for a couple of months but just resently rally trying to understand WHY I CAN'T HIT CRAP.

Following and keeping the target in the sites is going pretty good but when I pull the trigger to light him up man the nose is all over the place. I'll check and confirm the dampning and scalling this evening . Don't know if it that or pulling th trigger to hard or just excitement ( kinda like a 16 year old on a first date).

I am wondering if your sound card is holding things up.  When I played on a slower machine, I was getting some lag when the sound of the guns was being processed.

Just a thought...